I have dumped coal from a 5 gal pail into my hand fired that had been frozen or wet. The bottom of the bucket would have water in it. Stove would steam and sizzle, but haven't lost a fire yet. Now I shovel some from the tops of the bucket and pour out the water into anouther one.

Keep one bucket with a few small holes in it for the wet or frozen coal. Try to get a drain pan under it for an overnight, so when you need to use that coal it won't be carrying water into you fire. Steam burns aren't much fun!

Dave, if you're talking about your 520, I doubt it. The warmth of the feed pipe near the pot should have evaporated whatever water that didn't run down the pipe into the bin. I'd be more concerned about rotting out the bin feed pipe.

Yes, its in the DF-520. Had a couple of out fires after starting on a new pallet of coal that seems to contain more water in the bags. I have drilled a couple more holes in the bottom of my trash barrel bin that drains into a washer pan. I suck up about 1 gallon of water for every 3 bags before it goes into the DF-520. I just noticed while cleaning out the pot to restart the fire the coal was very wet. Not sure why the recent out fires.

BTW, it appears the cost of running coal and oil is about the same now since the oil price is below $2/gallon. Is there any problems with switching to oil so I can save my coal? I was considering covering the coal filled pot with a piece of sheet metal, and then cover with kao wool while running on oil.

I can't remember ever hearing that you needed to cover the pot when running oil. Oil is really meant as a convenience and it's not as efficient as it would be in a regular oil-fired boiler, but give it a try.

The coal fire went out again tonight. So I turned it to oil until I had time to restart the coal again, but I can't run on oil since inside the house really smells like exhaust. I'll have to get someone to check it out. The CO2 detector did not go off so assume its fine. I tried to restart the coal, and the auger was stuck. I moved the coal bin a bit and spun the auger by hand, and its seems to be freed up now. Maybe there is something clogging the auger. I'll let it run empty, and check it out tomorrow.

Checked the tooth setting, and it was set really high. Maybe I didn't have it tightened enough. Can running oil make the wet coal harden together so the auger is hard to turn when switching back to coal?